Withdraw loan, facilities given to Tata Motors: Congress MLA

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Congress MLA from Viramgam Dr Tejashreeben Patel has demanded withdrawal of loan and other facilities given to Tata Motors Limited (TML) as it has failed to fulfill the conditions in memorandum of agreement it signed with the state government in 2009.

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Raising the issue in the state Assembly, she said that TML had promised to manufacture 2.5 lakh to 3.5 lakh Nano cars per annum and raise it to five lakh per annum. But the company, she said, manufactured only 18,956 cars in 2014 and 23,605 cars in 2015. She also said that the company had promised to employ 85 per cent of its total workforce from the local areas but it had not happened so.

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TML, according to Dr Patel, was allotted 110 acres of government land at Rs 900 per square metre against the market price of Rs 4,000 per sqmt and a loan of Rs 33,000 crore at 0.1 percent interest to set up and run its small car plant. The repayment of the loan was to begin after a period of 20 years. The state government, she said, also built a 200 KV power supply system for the plant, linked with rail, allotted another 100 acre land for company’s township and also exempted it from paying stamp duty, registration charge and other payments, thus putting a heavy burden on the state exchequer to benefit the company.

Govt to increase cancer hospital bed capacity

Gandhinagar: Gujarat government has planned to increase the bed-capacity of Ahmed-abad-based Cancer & Research Institute from present 600 beds to 1,000 beds. Minister of State for Health, Shankar Chaudhary, informed this to Gujarat Assembly while replying to a question related to modernisation of the institute. Chaudhary said the decision had been taken considering the rush of patients from Gujarat and other states to the institute. Land has been allotted for the same and construction is undergoing, he said.

PHCs to have full strength by 2017

Gandhinagar: Gujarat will have full strength of Public Health Centres by the end of financial year of 2016-17. Minister of State for Health Shankar Chaudhary said this before state Assembly Wednesday while stating that as per the standard of one PHC per 25,000 population, presently Gujarat lacks 126 PHC. “By this standard, we have requirement of 1,423 PHCs, but we have presently 1,297 PHCs in the state with the backlog of 126,” he said in the House.

EDII, state govt to groom 500 tourism entrepreneurs

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Ahmedabad: As Gujarat is emerging as one of the top tourist destinations, the need for entrepreneurs in tourism sector has increased. To cash in on this, Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India and Tourism Corporation of Gujarat Ltd have recently jointly organised a skill and entrepreneurship development training programme for people willing to venture into tourism sector. With an aim to groom 500 entrepreneurs for tourism sector, the programme for the first batch of 50 existing as well as prospective tour and travel operators was launched earlier this week at EDII campus in Gandhinagar.